Sterling Days Inn Resort Mussoorie

... Ravana. After the procession of the Hindu deities, a fireworks show began with finale ending on the burning of Ravana. We kept our distance from the fireworks show since India is not regarded for their traffic safety and crowd control skills. But we enjoyed the festive atmosphere and watched people singing and children dancing. We enjoy our days in Mussoorie kicking back, drinking real coffee in a comfortable coffee shop and watching ...

... and gave it to them. But he only had one so they had to fight over it. It was then about 5 pm and we decided we wanted to go back to the Tavern in Mussoorie for dinner and get there before it got too late. We headed towards the clock tower (every town here has a clock tower with a round about circling it), to catch a taxi back up the mountain. One girl that was with us was trying to get a taxi and was not paying attention to where we were headed. First she went asked a guy ...

... not particularly upset, and later was very curious and later asked one of the girls in our group, "Is this how you guys live in America, with boys and girls together?" We're even starting to recognize local dogs (there's a cute yellow one who walks us to class each day and sits on our porch scaring the monkeys away) and it already feels like I've known India and the people here for most of my life. Ask any of the group how long we've been here and everyone would ...

... in a cramped dark room in Old Delhi....he never thought of medicine until the age of 15 he tells me from behind his looming cherrywood desk in his quite A/C office in the City Heart Hospital..He only pursued medicine after telling his father he wanted a vegetable cart...his father responded by chasing him down the street and throwing a pair of scissors, impaling gandhi in the lower flank....From that moment on, Sanjay would read voraciously, studying underneath streetlights ...

... for a long long time, and finally here! It's a little disappointing however that 6 weeks in India has pretty well inured me to culture shock on arrival; compared to Northern India, Nepal is "same, same, but different". Our next stop is Pokhara (3 days ride), and then we go into Nangi Village for a couple weeks. No idea what that will be like, we've been offered one project which includes 2 extra days of hiking in to work on a "Yak Farm Lodge" (really). Guess I'll let ya'll know in 2 weeks! MK

... of her property and told us that there were some nice hiking paths down that way. We thanked her and took her advice about the hiking paths. I think we lucked out, because if we hadn't met her, we would have never have had the lovely mountain hike we took for the next 2-3 hours. We hiked up into the mountains and had some gorgeous views when the fog rolled away. At around 4pm, we decided to turn around and head back to the guest house to make it home ...

Yesterday I had my first experience with the famous Indian railways! The eleven of us who are learning Hindi left New Delhi at the crack of dawn to catch our train to the language school back up into the Himalayas. Honestly, I was a bit nervous about the train ride, since I've been in some pretty chaotic train stations and had heard that the trains in India have rows of seats literally on top of eachother. However, my train riding experience ...

... above. It is always a strange form of give and take as we take pictures of Indians in their daily lives and Indians take pictures of us in our daily travel lives. In fact we are quite often stopped and asked to be in a picture with some random family or group of friends. Strange but it seems to work ok, as long as the picture doesn't turn into an opportunity for a hand to travel where it doesn't belong. Anyway, the Ganga, this mighty river is glacier feed at its source ...

... an hour fast the whole time. Unperturbed and it the travelling spirit we shrugged it off and headed out for a wander. I wanted to visit Maharishi's old Ashram again, and show Clare the place where Westerners finally caught up with Indian spirituality on mass. The Beatles learn't here in 1968 which opened the floodgates for seekers of truth and light suddenly making India, and Rishikesh in vogue. It was about 3km ...

... and after twenty minutes further negotiation we had another new neighbour. We affectionately named our new neighbour 'the old bugger from Bea' as Bea was where he lived. Thankfully this one got to sleep quite quickly. He did, however, wake up very early in the morning and sat rather unerringly on D's bed ! Thankfully, he got off an hour before us which gave us some time to change and freshen up in private. Three hours behind schedule, the train rolled into Amritsar at 10.30 am.